Given the prevalence of weak central States in many African countries, subnational politics is crucial to understanding a range of important outcomes, including democracy, civil society, ethnic conflict, and economic development. The six papers presented in this special issue respond to concerns about these issues raised at the American Political Science Association's Africa Workshop 2012 on 'Local Communities and the State in Africa' that took place at the University of Botswana in Gaborone, Botswana. Kirk Harris's paper 'Bread and Freedom: Linking Democracy and Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa' examines some of the taken-for-granted assumptions about the relationship between democracy and food security in Africa. Innocent Chirisa, Marilyn Gaza and Elmond Bandanko note in 'Housing Cooperatives and the Politics of Local Organization and Representation in Peri-Urban Harare, Zimbabwe', that low-income residents in peri-urban areas outside of Harare rely on local housing community-based cooperatives and consortia in order to increase their land security. Parakh Hoon, in 'Elephants are Like our Diamonds: Recentralizing Community Based Natural Resource Management in Botswana, 1996-2012', examines the patterns of State building in Botswana between the 1990s and 2012. Majuta Judas Mamogale's paper 'Financial Performance of Local Government in Limpopo Province, 2010-2012' reveals 'twilight practices' at the local level in South Africa, where the formal processes of administrative decentralization are coopted by informal but ritualized local practices. Lauren M. MacLean and George Bob-Milliar in their respective papers focus on the politics of belonging and the representation of citizens at the local level in Ghana. MacLean focuses on the initial period following the democratic transition in 1999, and Bob-Milliar discusses the effects of participation on dynamics of representation after a decade of democratic consolidation in 2012. [ASC Leiden abstract]